


Earthquake

by evilwriter37



Series: Discord Whump Prompts [6]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Earthquakes, Gen, Natural Disasters, Whump, hiccup!whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 17:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20764100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilwriter37/pseuds/evilwriter37
Summary: Berk suffers a massive earthquake that leaves Hiccup and Toothless hurt and stranded in the Mead Hall.





	Earthquake

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: natural disaster

The ground shook. It started as a small trembling that Hiccup could hardly feel, that he noticed more in the way the wine was beginning to slosh in his goblet. Dust fell from the rafters.

The Mead Hall went quiet for a moment, everyone looking down at the ground, where the shaking was undoubtedly coming from. Toothless made a  _ mrow _ sound at Hiccup, looking at him questioningly. 

“Earthquake!” Stoick yelled before anyone else could, standing from the head of the table. “Out! Everyone get out!”

An earthquake. Berk had experienced them before, hadn’t had a big one in a long time. Hopefully, this one wouldn’t be big. Big or small though, the Mead Hall was still the worst place to be for one.

Hiccup rose as people began to rush out, though he planned on being one of the last to leave, wanting to help with the sudden evacuation. Just as he got standing, it felt like the ground slipped right from beneath him, rocking from side-to-side, and he fell, landing on his hands and knees, scraping his palms. The motion continued, the ground shaking beneath him, moving one way and then the other. It was sickening to endure.

Screams came with it. He heard loud crashes: rock falling no doubt. He had to make sure everyone got out of there. 

Hiccup scrambled up, caught his balance, and looked around. He saw a family huddling under a table nearby, and he rushed towards them.

“You have to get out!” he yelled over all the noise. The very earth was rumbling. “Come on!” He helped the mother and child out from under the table, the father coming behind them. “Avoid the pillars! Go for the doors!”

The family nodded, the little girl was picked up, and they went for the doors. Hopefully the crush of people would be able to make it outside with no injuries. 

Hiccup looked around, saw his father and the other Dragon Riders helping people out. The earth kept rocking from side-to-side, and Hiccup lost his balance again, going down, scraping his palms on the ground.

After that, he lost himself to the shaking. He couldn’t get up again no matter how hard he tried. The earth just kept heaving and tossing him around. Rock came loose from the roof of the hall, crashed down near him, shattering and spraying rock across his face and hands where they streaked blood. He opened his eyes, could see nothing but dust. He found a nearby, skittering table, put a bleeding hand on it, pulled himself to his feet. The hall was mostly empty save for him and Toothless. His dragon had been crouched protectively over him, wings raised to keep more shards of stone from falling on him. Those wings were now bleeding.

“Come on, Toothless!” Hiccup coughed as he inhaled the dust. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Hiccup!” he heard his father shout. He was just outside the Mead Hall’s large doors, looked like he was about to step back inside.

“No!” Hiccup waved a hand. “Stay outside!” He and Toothless were the only ones in there now, and Hiccup made a run for the doors, his dragon keeping pace beside him. He tried not to lose his balance again as the earth kept shaking.

Right when he was getting used to the ground rocking, it heaved upwards under him, sent him flying. He landed painfully on his stomach, used his already-scraped palms to protect his face. He laid there trying to regain his breath as the ground jolted up and down.

He heard his father call his name. He looked up through the dust, eyes stinging, reached out a bloody hand towards him. He was so close to the doors. If his father could just run inside and grab him…

Rock fell over the entrance with a huge crash, blocking Stoick and any daylight from view. Hiccup screamed, brought his arms up to protect his head. Rock careened away from the crash, flying directly at him. One piece tore open the top of his left hand, and he let out a muffled yell into the rolling ground. Another landed hard on his back, and Hiccup felt the crunch more than heard it, his breath taken from him. He heard Toothless give a shriek of alarm or maybe pain, and everything went dark as his dragon threw his body over his.

Hiccup could hardly breathe as he lay there under Toothless, the piece of stone heavy on his back. He prayed to the gods it hadn’t broken anything extremely important, that he would be able to move, that he wasn’t actually dying right now. His hand pulsed out blood. 

It felt like a long time before the shaking stopped. Hiccup could hear other crashes and sounds of falling stone during it, and he found himself praying some more. He didn’t want anymore stone to fall on him or Toothless. And was Toothless okay? He was busy covering Hiccup. Who knows how he could have gotten hurt?

Finally, it stopped. For a while, Hiccup just laid there, trying to breathe through the pain in his ribs, and all he inhaled was dust. He coughed, and that sparked a ribbon of pain through his body that left him panting with tears building up in his eyes. 

“T-Toothless, get this stone off of me.” His words came out weakly.

Toothless pushed with his nose, and the stone rolled off of Hiccup. Hiccup was able to breathe easier now that it was gone, but it still hurt his ribs terribly. They were broken from the back, most certainly. He wiggled and curled his toes. His spine was okay. It was just the ribs then. 

His hand was in bad shape. Toothless had gotten off of him, was letting out a low, purple flame from his maw to give them light to see by, and he thought maybe he saw bone through all the blood. Hiccup had to stop that from bleeding.

With Toothless’ help, he was able to tear off a piece of his tunic and tie it tight around his hand. The action had him cursing and his tears falling through the dust on his face. He hurt terribly.

And now Toothless. “Bud, are you okay?” Hiccup asked, voice choked with dust. He needed to cough again, but he was afraid of what that would do to his ribs. With his uninjured hand, he rubbed at his muzzle, felt the reassuring heat of his flame. 

Toothless tried directing his light over his body, but it didn’t work out so well. Hiccup realized they needed better light. He began searching around the wreck of the Mead Hall for a torch or a lantern. He was lucky that nothing wooden had set on fire, or else he’d have two big problems on his hands. He was hunched over, right hand held over his ribs. It felt a little better that way, but not by much. 

Hiccup found a lantern, the glass cracked, and hoisted it up for Toothless to light it. He did, and the broken glass gave a weird, distorted glow over the hall. In the circle of light around him, all he could see was ruin. Pieces of a broken table lay nearby, the ground scattered with red that he hoped was wine, and food that had been sent flying. Luckily, he’d been the only one in the Mead Hall when the entrance had collapsed, so he only had himself and Toothless to worry about.

Not luckily, there was a pile of stone over the entrance that he couldn’t even see daylight through. He held his lantern up, looked over the stones with exhaustion and disdain.

Next, he took a look over Toothless, circled around him while holding the lantern. His right wing was at an awkward angle, and there was blood on him, scales torn off from flying stone.

“We’re gonna be okay, bud,” Hiccup said. He didn’t know if he believed it or not. Maybe he believed it. There were people with dragons on the other side of the stone, and they would be finding a way to clear it. He just had to sit and wait.

He did so what he hoped was a safe distance away from the blocked entrance. He didn’t want to be hurt when stone came rolling inwards. He sat cross-legged, putting pressure on his injured hand, trying to find a position that made it so that he could breathe with less pain. 

It seemed that sitting with his back against Toothless was the best option. He coughed, a frisson of agony through his body making him moan and grit his teeth. He knew breathing in all this dust couldn’t be good for him, and that air would eventually run out, but there was nothing else for him to inhale. 

Hiccup got his hopes up when he heard blasting on the other side of the stone. Pebbles and dust rained down from the pile. They were working on trying to get him out.

It felt like it was a long time before a rock rolled away and let in sunlight and fresh air. Hiccup wanted to scramble towards it and inhale it like it was water and he was a man dying of thirst, but he knew it wouldn’t be safe. That was, until he saw a face pop through.

“Hiccup!” It was his dad.

Hiccup scrambled up despite the pain he was in and rushed over, adoring the feeling of fresh air filling his lungs. The air in the Mead Hall felt so heavy and dirty in comparison. 

“Dad!” It was hoarse.

Stoick reached a hand through, and Hiccup grabbed hold of it with his good one, his fingers covered in his own drying blood.

“Are you okay?”

Hiccup decided to be honest with him. This was a crisis, and he wanted out of it as soon as possible.

“I-I think some of my ribs are broken,” he answered. “It’s hard to breathe. And there’s a bad gash on my left hand.”

“We’re gonna get you out of there,” Stoick said. He gave his hand a squeeze, then let go. “Just stay back, alright?”

Hiccup nodded, went back to where he had been. For a while he stood, but then he sat, leaning against Toothless again. His dragon gave him an affectionate lick on the head. Hiccup rubbed his side.

“We’ll get you fixed up too, bud,” Hiccup said. “If anyone knows how to fix broken wings, it’s us.” 

Toothless cooed at him, and Hiccup could hear the pain in his voice. He hated that he was hurting, would have liked if his dragon had come out of this with no injuries. Let him be hurt, not Toothless.

Hiccup heard yelling and orders on the other side, but he couldn’t make sense of the voices. He’d probably inhaled too much dust and stale air, and he wasn’t even breathing well to begin with. He felt faint and lightheaded.

Hiccup was on the verge of consciousness when he saw Skullcrusher ram through the stones and into the hall. Stoick ran over, his friends at his heels, and Hiccup moaned as he was taken into his arms.

“Gonna get you out of here,” Stoick told him. 

Hiccup let his head loll in his father’s arms, finding it difficult to pay attention to any one thing, to make sense of what was going on around him. He felt a gentle hand sweep back his hair, but he didn’t know who it belonged to. He closed his eyes and drifted away. 

  
  


Toothless anxiously watched Hiccup. A medical camp had been set up in the center of town, and Hiccup was among the other wounded. The moans and groans of pain from all around him seemed to make his ears ache.

He paid no attention as people fussed over his wing. He was too worried about Hiccup. Yes, it hurt when they set the bone and splinted it, but not as much as seeing Hiccup unconscious, his chest rising and falling faintly, dust and blood and dried tears covering his face. He put an ear near his chest, was happy when he could hear his heart beating. He just kept his head rested on the cot, content to hear that his best friend was still alive. 

Toothless was overwhelmed with relief when Stoick and the old healer, Gothi, came over to him. He straightened himself up, looked at them expectantly.

They took Hiccup’s tunic off and rolled him onto his stomach. There was horrible bruising on his pale, freckled skin. Gothi put her gnarled hands to his back and began her work. There were cracking sounds as she moved her hands, and Hiccup moaned, but remained unconscious. That was good. Toothless didn’t want him feeling anymore pain.

Next was his hand. Toothless watched as it was cleaned and disinfected, and then stitched up to hide the bone underneath. After some conferring with Stoick with hand signals, Gothi went on to her next patient.

Stoick stayed with Hiccup, pulling a chair up beside his cot. Then he took a bowl of water and a cloth and began washing Hiccup’s hands and face. Toothless cooed at this, and Stoick looked up at him.

“He’ll be alright, Toothless,” he told him. Toothless heard his name, the word “alright”, knew that Stoick was talking about his son. Hiccup was going to be okay.

  
  


Okay was a long process though. Hiccup had broken multiple ribs, and some bone had flaked off on his left hand. Not only that, but his lungs were infected from breathing in so much of the dust. He was ordered not to breathe shallowly despite how it hurt, and he was told he was allowed to cough. Mucus came up, dirty and yellow. 

Hiccup spent his first few days after that in the medical camp. It was just easier for Gothi to keep all of her patients in one place. She made him eat horrible tasting herbs and drink nasty liquids, but they would ease the pain and make the infection go away.

Soon, he was allowed to rest in his own bed, which he was glad for. He’d managed to take a bath all on his own, and now he was laying in his bed on his back, exhausted from the ordeal of cleaning himself, but glad that all the dirt and blood was off of him.

“We have a lot of work to do after,” Hiccup mused to Toothless. The earthquake had left Berk in shambles. The elders claimed they’d never seen one so bad before. Some were wondering if they’d angered the gods. 

Toothless made an agitated noise at him that Hiccup could understand as:  _ “No work. Just rest.” _

“Yeah, you’re right, bud.” Hiccup pet him on the head, and closed his eyes. Closing his eyes was hard now, because it left him in darkness, a darkness so similar to that of the ruined Mead Hall. He drifted off into nightmares that he hadn’t actually gotten out. But always, no matter what happened, there was Toothless’ comforting presence by his side. 


End file.
